Non-traditional Self Portrait~ tic-tac edition

When I heard that the theme was going to be self-portraits, not gonna lie I quivered. Then I heard that we could have partners, so I wasn't as upset. Me and my partner Connor sat there thinking of what we could do for the self-portrait, along with who. We decided to do a dog, and of course Connor insisted on it being his dog. We thought it would be fun if we posterized it on photo-shop and then did it with tic-tacs. We came up with tic-tacs because we wanted something small and round, and Connor came up with it right off the bat. I think that it makes the piece look better because it can be compared to the pixels in the printed picture. It makes it look even better, and it allows your senses to feel, see, and smell. I think the use of tic-tacs was an important part of the piece because i don't think any other material would have captured the picture better. We took the risks of choosing an edible material, for as it could have melted because we were using the hot glue gun. We also took the risk of spray painting some of the white tic-tacs black, when it could have just rubbed right off or spread to other colors. This piece draws you in with your senses, and it makes you want to touch and smell it. We most definitely thought outside of the box with this piece, and I think it turned out really well. 

Sticky Situation- Candy Road

When I heard the theme "Sticky Situation", it made me think about things that were sticky such as gum, glue, food, candy, etc. I liked the idea of candy, so I branched off of that idea and came up with Candy Land, the board game. I was originally going to do a candy land, but I just stuck to doing the paths. I was able to think outside the box with my ideas because the theme is so broad; although I suppose I could have stepped even more outside of the box. As you can see in the picture below there is a pattern of the repeating colors on the never ending path. The black background was painted black to make the path pop with color. Using acrylic paint as my medium was a very good choice in my opinion because I think it captures the colors better and dimension well. However, painting is not my choice of method; though the mini lessons did help me a little with my control of my brush and my precise lines. Overall I think that my painting turned out well, even if I do wish I had a little more time to work on it and make it look like a real Candy Land.  

Up Close and Personal

This drawing was for my up close and personal project, which took a lot of brainstorming and playing with ideas. I came up with many ideas for this project such as a bug on a leaf, a spider face, a hand, cupcakes, trees, etc. I chose to do lips because when I look at lips I think about how intricate they are. I emphasized the highlights by using white, and placing it where the light hits the lips. The medium I used for this is chalk pastels. I chose this medium over the others because I have never worked with them before, and I wanted to try new things. My medium emphasizes my piece because I can use more smearing techniques to help things blend, such as the red on the lips. I took many risks during this project such as using a new medium. You have to be really careful with the smearing with this medium because if i had smeared the red into the white teeth, then it would not look good. I encourage trying new things and risks in art because if you don't take risks how will you know what you are best at? By me including medium and technique in my final project, my final project was how I wanted it to turn out. 

What's The Point?

The "what's the point" theme sparked many ideas as to what i wanted to do my project on. I came up with many ideas for this project such as someone pointing, focus point, thorns on a rose, lion/tiger yawning, etc. I chose to do broken glass because it shows sharp ridges, also what's the point of a broken glass? I showed contrast in my work by using lights and darks in my shading, to give my glasses the object dimension. I chose to use pencil as my medium over pen or charcoal because I feel like I can get a lot of contrast and dimension out of pencil with lights and darks. In art you can make simple projects stand out by taking risks and thinking outside of the box. Don't be afraid to push your darks and think outside of the box. Trying new mediums to work with and get a feel for is always a good thing to do because you never know if you succeed better with other mediums. I can admit that I could have pushed my darks a little further, as well as try a new medium and take risks. The message that I am conveying is that broken glass can resemble a lot more than just a sharp object. You can relate it to many things related to life and feelings. Even if you feel broken like a broken glass, you can always be fixed, just as a broken glass can with glue. You may not be able to see this message in my drawing, but if you think about a deeper meaning than just broken glass, it can mean a lot more.

"The Hummingbird" Linoleum Project!

This is a picture of my hummingbird print. The process to get this print was quite interesting! First you must print pictures of the animal you chose(hummingbird), and also of the background or place. Then you must draw them together. Once you have a sketch of how you want it to look, you take a  rectangle of linoleum, and draw the same picture on it. After that you take a tool used to dig small areas, and you cut out all of the places you would like to be dark or not there. For example I cut out the lines in my bird to make it look like it has texture. Once you have what your carvings exactly how you want them, you take a paint roller and a flat piece of metal or plastic, and roll the paint onto your stamp nice and thick. Then you get a piece of paper(what ever color you would like), and place the linoleum face down softly. Making sure you don't slide the linoleum around on the paper, gently slide the linoleum into your hand and flip it over. Smooth out the paper to make sure all of the paint gets onto the paper, and ta-da! You have your print! In my opinion I think this project was very interesting. I do think I could have done a better job on the carving part of this project to make sure it showed all of the texture I wanted, but that was my only challenge! I have learned from my mistakes! Overall this project was very fun and cool, and I would love to do it again!

Frog Mouth! (Photo-shop)

This is a photo-shopped picutre of a frog extending from a tounge out of the mouth. As you can see the frog is the same color as the tounge. I did this by using the clone stamp tool on photo-shop. You may also notice that the back legs are missing from the frog. I used the eraser tool, put the opacity down so that the legs slowly disappered, and blended into the lips, face, and mouth. To get the shape and angle I wanted I used the transform tool to move it around to go with the curl of the tounge. To finish it up I used the layer drop shadow and played around to make it look realistic. This has been a very fun expierence and I love photo-shop! I have learned so much!

Angry Pancake! (Photo-shop)

This is my photo-shopped angry pancake! From this experience I learned very much about photo-shop and how to use it. What I did to create this end product is that I took a picture of pancakes, and a picture of a fish and combined them. I used the liquify and bloat tool first to open up a space in the pancakes to put the mouth. After that I used the polygonal lasso tool to cut the picture of the fish so that only the mouth was left. I played with the hue/saturation tool to find a color to match better with the pancakes. I also used the scale tool to make the mouth image fit into the hole I created for the mouth. Once I finished that I played around with the eraser tool to clean up the edges of the mouth and blend them with the pancakes. This expirence was very cool and I enjoyed it very much. The information I have learned was very helpful.

Spray-Paint Stencil!

This is my spray paint stencil. Many steps were taken to achieve this product, including finding a picture and photo-shopping it, tracing each color to a large piece of paper, cutting out the tracings to create stencils, and spray painting the stencils onto a piece of cardboard.

After photo-shopping the photo and printing it, i projected it onto a large piece of paper, I then traced each color onto separate pieces of paper. I struggled with this part of the project due to me being unable to match the picture up to the tracing the next day. I have learned my lesson of course, it was just very frustrating. This was not my best work, as you can see, only because of this silly mishap.

After cutting out my stencils, came the spray painting part(the fun part.) I learned that if you spray too close to the paper, then it creates puddles of paint, that can lead to the paint seeping under your stencil to places you did not plan on it going. I also learned that spray paint is very sticky and permanent(i am still trying to get it off.)

I know i could have done a better job if i had not messed up my stencils in the beginning of this project. It was not my best work, but it was a learning experience.

Contour Shoe Drawing!

This is a picture of a contour drawn shoe. You can see that it is a contour drawn shoe because it does not shoe any sign of me lifting up my pen. I practiced contour drawing before this shoe by drawing my hand in different position without lifting up my pen. I can admit that practicing contour drawings with my hand has made me better at contour drawings.Contour drawings in my opinion are smoother and not as sketchy. It is one fluid line, and it looks nicer. Contour drawings help your drawing skills and i can prove it!